w Brunswick lay before him as a wide field of enterprise, he yearned
after larger conquests, and therefore in 1784, at the earnest and
repeated request of Benjamin Chappel, he paid a visit to Prince Edward
Island.

He spent about a fortnight there, preaching in Charlottetown and St.
Peters, with small tokens of success, and returned mourning the
spiritual condition of the people.

After much thought and prayer, he was married on Feb. 17, 1784, to
Miss Mary Gay, of Cumberland, an estimable woman, who had been led to
Christ about two years previously under his preaching. She was
possessed of gifts and grace as her letters testify, and was eminently
qualified for the high duties of a minister's wife.

So extensive was the territory and so great the spiritual needs of the
people that the young missionary of twenty three years of age, with a
burning passion for souls, wrote to John Wesley in 1783, earnestly
requesting him to send missionaries to Nova Scotia, who replied that
he had hopes of sending assistance a few months later when Conference
met. There being no missionaries, however, sent from Great Britain, he
naturally looked towards the United States for help, and a few months
after his marriage, he started for Baltimore where the Conference was
to be held under the superintendence of Dr. Coke. He travelled by way
of Boston and preached twice in the city, when under the first sermon
one person was converted, and at the second service several were
deeply convinced of sin. As he passed through New York he preached in
the Methodist Church, and after the services visited a dying woman,
whom he found in great distress about her spiritual condition, and he
had the great joy of leading her to Christ, as she died next day,
shouting, "Glory! Glory be to thy blessed name!" On his journey he
preached at every opportunity and always with blessed results, and
before the Conference assembled in Baltimore on December 24, 1784, he
gave Dr. Coke a detailed account of the state of the work in Nova
Scotia, and the Conference appointed Freeborn Garretson, and James O.
Cromwell to labor in that field. Both of these ministers hastened at
once to that province, but William Black spent some time in the United
States preaching here and there, and called for his wife who was
visiting her friends in Massachusetts, she having been born in Boston,
and with the tedious travel he did not reach Halifax till the end of
May. As he was returning homew